Gregory Kavka was a moral philosopher whose work dealt with what he called paradoxes of (nuclear) deterrence, some (many? all?) of which dealt with the concept of intent. In the case of the famous toxin, Kavka’s argument (if I am qualified to paraphrase it, which I’m probably not) you can’t actually intend to do something later, in order to receive a pay-off now, when you know that when “later” arrives, there will no rational reason to do what you “intended” to do, because the pay-off has already occurred and can’t be retracted.

Related to Kovalchuk, Kavka — if he were a sports lawyer for the NHL, and not a deceased moral philosopher on the topic of mutually assured destruction — would argue, not only is it not possible for him to promise to do something that he has no reasonable expectation of being able to do, but it’s not possible for him to intend to do it either.

Shorter Kavka: get paid up front.

Some posts the robot says are related, but I'll let you be the judge of that: